The World’s Empty Office Buildings Have Become a Debt Time Bomb

Re:The World’s Empty Office Buildings Have Become a Debt Tim... by lumost on Monday June 26, 2023 @11:48AM (#36481323)

economically, printing more money isn't inherently wrong. Money was destroyed by default. Printing money to counterbalance this ... works. In principle, this is why communist regimes can get away with ordering organizations to do X, for Y.

The problem is that if you do this every time, you are effectively entrenching the current power structures of society. This isn't a bad thing if those power structures are good - or necessary. But ... it's obvious that repeatedly doing this benefits a specific class of individuals (capital holders) by capping their downside. Capping the downside of existing capital holders also caps the upside of non-capital holders by creating an uneven playing field and eliminating opportunities available to those with "clean" balance sheets.

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Re:The World’s Empty Office Buildings Have Become a Debt Tim... by kristov on Monday June 26, 2023 @12:35PM (#36482064)

A chunk of the money created was by lenders, to charge borrowers for the risk of default. If you print more money then you remove the incentive to assess risk. I don't know if this is good or bad, but economics says risk assessment is how capital gets allocated to "good things". Here "good things" I guess means less wasted space in a city center.

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